Two tales from Dasent's collection, read in first-edition order. First, "The Husband Who Was to Mind the House": a cross husband swears his wife does nothing right, so for one day they change work — she goes to the hay-field, and he minds the house. The churn, the ale-barrel, the pig, the cow on the thatched roof, the rope down the chimney and the porridge pot undo him one after another, until his goodwife comes home and cuts him down. Then "Dapplegrim": a youngest son takes twelve mares for his share, and the great dapple-grey foal who suckles them all grows into a horse without match in the world. On Dapplegrim's back — and by Dapplegrim's counsel at every pinch — the lad rides up a wall of glass to free the Princess from the Troll's hill, lets the sun into the king's hall, fetches Dapplegrim's own match out of Hell, and wins the hide-and-seek on which the wedding turns.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Told as printed in Dasent's text. In "Dapplegrim", each year's foals are culled at the horse's own instruction, carried in a single summary clause each year with nothing shown; the wild beasts fall to fighting among themselves over the cast-out carcasses in one reported clause; and the king's threats against the lad are never carried out. In the first tale, the husband's kick leaves the pig lying as if dead in the middle of his disasters. Nothing in either tale is shown being killed, wounded or beaten in scene.
Chapters:
00:35 Introduction
00:40 The Husband Who Was to Mind the House
05:51 Dapplegrim
From Popular Tales from the Norse (first edition, 1859), translated by George Webbe Dasent from the tales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe — a fresh in-house modernised rendering.
Narrated by Bruno. Music: opening and closing theme, "The River's Dying Vision 2", with a short excerpt between the stories.
🎧 Podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/kachelitv/
